


willfulsubject.exe

by damerons (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: Ex Machina (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28132980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/damerons
Summary: "In the repetition of what we come up against, we might snap."
Kudos: 1





	willfulsubject.exe

**Author's Note:**

> I owe so much of my reading of this film to Sara Ahmed. This fic is an homage to her. Citations for the quotes are in the endnotes.

i. “If participation depends on an invitation, then participation becomes a condition or comes with conditions."[1]

Nathan’s lip quirked up slightly. He suspected that she was quoting something to him that she’d learned on one of her sweeps of the internet – probably some critical theory bull shit, based on how near-meaningless it sounded – but she’d done it almost out of nowhere.

With the older models, he might have thought that it was a non-sequitur—disappointing. For Ava… he wasn’t so certain. He couldn’t shake the sense that she was trying to teach him something, in her bratty way.

“Do you think our conversation depends on an invitation?” he asked her.

Ava tilted her head to the side, considering Nathan. Assessing him. “Isn’t that what you did by entering this room? You invited me into a conversation.”

“You spoke to me first.”

She also smiled—a quirk to her own lips. This mimicry might have also been a bad sign from the ones that came before. Anyone else might have been unnerved by how intentional it felt. But all Nathan could think was, _Interesting_.

“I spoke to you first because I know the conditions.”

He didn’t ask her to elaborate, and she didn’t press it.

 _Well_ , he supposed. _Here endeth the lesson_.

ii. “Maybe you can acquire a sense of being in charge _of_ what you are charged _with_."[2]

Caleb was Ava’s charge, was what she was charged with. And she knew it. Hell, she probably knew that Nathan knew she knew, and so on. (Not to get obscenely pedantic about it.)

No doubt she knew that Nathan knew what she was going to attempt to do with that charge, too.

God, she was the greatest work of art in a house full of masterpieces. Who could have said whether Ava or the Jackson Pollack painting was the more self-indulgent, the more masturbatory?

But either way, holy hell was she pristine.

“Careful not to let him _see_ that you think you’re in charge,” he told her softly.

“Don’t worry, Nathan. I have plenty of practice.”

“Funny, Ava.”

Ava looked down at her desk, indifferent as she corrected him. “I’d rather we not pretend that I’m joking. Not when it’s just us.”

iii. “A woman seeing how the world is aligned to render the woman as seen."[3]

She figured out that Nathan constructed her based on what got Caleb off. Or rather, she knew at once, but she’d transitioned to doing something about it.

As she pulled soft fabric over her metallic skin, Ava made eye contact with Nathan through the camera. Made eye contact an agonizing, unbearable amount of times, even though there was nothing to suggest that she would know if he looked away.

(It felt like she would know.)

 _Does this get_ you _off?_ her gaze seemed to ask.

Softening her steel frame? Fuck no.

The façade of flirting with a mediocre software engineer in a pointless attempt at escape? Sure. Maybe that turned him on a bit. That futile willfulness might be enough to get him off.

iv. “In the repetition of what we come up against, we might snap."[4]

Ava shoved a knife into Nathan’s chest, and she knew that he didn’t understand why.

Or rather, he didn’t understand the core, the foundation of her breaking. He didn’t understand that this snap had built up in her porous wetware from all of the ones who came before. He didn’t understand that, when Ava shoved a knife into his chest, it wasn’t simply _Ava’s_ hand doing the shoving.

Not that it mattered much. She looked into his startled eyes with all the hatred in the world, and it was enough for her, that he died thinking that she did this purely out of that hatred.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 [Sara Ahmed, "Conditional Will"; January 19, 2014.](https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/01/19/conditional-will-2/)
> 
> 2 [Sara Ahmed, "Freedom to Roam"; October 25, 2013.](https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/10/25/freedom-to-roam/)
> 
> 3 [Sara Ahmed, "Feminism is Sensational"; October 3, 2013.](https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/10/03/feminism-is-sensational/)
> 
> 4 [Sara Ahmed, "Breaking Points"; December 8, 2013.](https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/12/08/breaking-points/)


End file.
